280 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



fed them cracker dust and oatmeal, which he threw on the water at feeding time. 

 After a time he noticed that eels came to the surface of the water to eat the food 

 thrown for the ducks, and he assumed that they must have run up from the river 

 below. He disposed of his ducks and made a screen across the creek at the bottom 

 of his land, arranging an opening by which the eels could enter but could not return. 

 In the winter he covers the creek with flooring so that the water will not freeze, and 

 now at feeding time when the eels hear his footsteps they will come to the surface of 

 the water in the creek for their meals. I could make an eel pond if I knew how long 

 it takes to grow them to two pounds weight; so if you know please tell me, for this is 

 no fish story, but an eel story that is true." 



COMMENTS. 



My friend commenting on this letter says: "The writer of the inclosed letter lives 

 in Jersey and describes the decadence of my earliest hunting and stamping ground. 

 I began with him as a small boy with pin hook and for ' sunnies,' and a bow-gun 

 for blackbirds, and rose through the successive stages of penny hook and eighteen-cent 

 pistol, dollar jointed pole and three-dollar sixteen-bore, purchased at a junk-shop with 

 carefully saved dimes, to Leonard 5-oz., and Scott hammerless. Alas! the pellucid 

 stream that heads in the Orange Mountains and used to yield the speckled starred ! 

 (Oh, how I remember a half-pound fontinalis we kept for more than a year in the 

 well !) That stream now runs black dye stuffs to the kills. But the memory of those 

 days will never die — and the boy who fished and hunted with me seems to love me 

 still — loves me because I loved Nature with him. He may be poor, he may be un- 

 learned, but, as Emerson says, we have something in common. 



"He has within himself a god (as Pasteur calls it), a high ideal. His life is gentle. 

 He cultivates Marie Louise violets for a living. Give us something about eels in 

 Forest and Stream — eels, rapid growers, prolific to a fault. Centuries ago they got a 

 lot of money out of them at Comacchio lagoons near Venice. Your friend Theodatus 

 of patronymic says they are well suited to culture. 



"And would you believe it, old Rondeletius (I have a printed copy, Lyons, 1554) 

 says every eel is born in fresh water — Anguilla omnis nascitnr in aqua dulci— and adds 

 they go to sea or salt-water lagoons. His chapter on crustacean fish food is a marvel. 

 I don't know whether Pinchon, who raised fish artificially in the century of Columbus, 

 tried eels on. I am sure the Romans did, for Pliny tells how Pollio, the ass who cut 

 his arteries when his fortune was reduced to five hundred thousand dollars, to save 

 himself from starvation, used to pitch live negroes to his eels to give them a fine flavor. 

 So tell us something about eels." 



